AttentionMax

This blog’s purpose is not to cover the specifics of my life at Clickable, but I occasionally sprinkle in a few relevant gems from the grind…

While not as significant as introducing kids into the world, I led a team at Clickable to introduce the beta version our new Web site last week. We tried to do something different: make our customer-support community our home page. Scott Wilder, general manager of online communities at Intuit, and a Clickable advisor, recommended making our customer support community as visible as possible. I took him to heart, literally, and my CEO had the courage and vision to support this strategy. Additionally, I had an extremely talented group of designers, coders, operations managers and product people to help me. I defined the strategy and business requirements, but the rest of the team propped me up along the way.

This first phase of our launch includes a robust University, full transparent product user guide, best practices, case studies, advertising glossary, introductory movie and The Official Clickable Blog. In addition, we added a robust product informational section, expanded information about the company, demo and tutorial signups everywhere, Live Help (chat) and simple product signup on every single page, and a single-sign-in experience for users of our product. In fact, Clickable Community becomes the anchor tab within our online advertising solution. “We’re here to help, and we’re never more than a click away.” Even though this is a customer-support community, all the resources and interactivity are open to everyone — yes, including non-customers. There’s much more to come in August and September, including expanding educational resources, community user registration and forums.

I’ve said before that the Web site is becoming the marketing hub…

The Web site must become your brand hub. The Web site is the anchor for a range of critical actions in the consideration and purchase funnel. It is where search engines discover brands and where they direct prospects. It is the currency of pass-along when others wish to refer or recommend you. It is where the most engaged prospects learn about your brand, or fail to learn what they need to know in order to engage further. It is often a critical repository for collecting names, demographic information, purchase intentions and behaviors. It is a listening mechanism and interaction platform when customers do wish to engage. For many businesses, it’s where transactions actually take place, and services are rendered. It increasingly is where people turn when things go wrong, and the place where problems are corrected, or not. It is where companies have the choice to engage intimately with customers, or instill a cold, faceless façade. As the marketplace increasingly goes digital, the Web site should play a central role in leading a company’s key customer performance metrics to drive overall marketing strategy.

…and I’m excited we’re building a foundation at Clickable in that spirit. As you can imagine, I’ll be leading the team blog and featuring the rest of community as the center of our marketing strategy, including branding, customer engagement, listening and acquisition. More later.

I welcome your feedback.